The applications not only must be robust, stable, efficient, fast but also they must be nice. Between two programs that fulfill the same requests the user will choose the one that is visually more agreeable. And in this aspect the topic of the icons fulfills an essential function.

Of so much meanwhile someone asks in the forum where to find icons. There are many pages, be already of free icons or of those of payment. The ideal thing is that the icons of our application have a common aesthetics and to avoid to mix flat icons with others with effect 3D. Often to find the suitable set is not easy since very much depends on the type of application that we are developing. An example: one of the applications at which I am employed is a system for big kitchens (hospitals, schools, old people’s homes, communes). To find a set of icons of this topic is not easy (menus, food, for giving only a few examples). Also it is necessary to bear in mind the sense of the system, in my case it is a question of a system to improve the feeding and an icon of a hamburger is not the most representative thing in this case.

Here others have a list of pages with interesting icons, some are free, others not.

TDC software is happy to introduce to you a new product recently developed by our company.

“TDC Web Customer Portal” is a web application which quite simply provides a quick, dynamic and cost-effective link between your development team and your customers. Instantly it gives your customers the ability to view current bugs and features requested, or even make them part of the process by giving them permission to request features, consults, and report bugs, incidents and new ideas.

Your customer will also have the possibility to vote the ideas and the requests created by other users. This will give you and your development team the possibility to rank the requests from your customers and evaluate and analyse the ideas reported by them.

Let’s take a look to some of the features of this application.

Web Portal Login Page

This is the login page where your customers will have to enter the user name and password provided by you in first place.

Web Portal Main Page

And this is the main menu. As you can see the design is simple to understand and learn, clean and clear for any kind of user. In other words this web application is totally user-friendly.

As you may also notice thru this portal you will be able to publish “announcements” to communicate news about your company, the new releases of your products, new features and so on.

Issue management and customer communication

If your customers want to report a “new bug” for example they only have to click in the link “Report a bug” in the main page and after that they will have to complete a simple form and press “Send”. That’s it!

Web customer portal Report Bug Form

The Customer Portal allows your clients to monitor the progress of their reported issues. This gives them peace of mind and reduces the need for repetitive calls and meetings to discuss the state of the issues involved.

Web customer portal Viewing a Bug

In this page is possible to see all the information related to any kind of issue. This is also the place where your users will be able to contact to your development team for example to provide more information if necessary or to clarify any detail related to any issue.

Web customer portal Issues List

This is the page where your customers will be able to see all the issues reported and created by them. They can “search” issues by introducing any text in the search entry box beside the list, they can edit issues, print a report for each issue and also export to Excel, Word, XML or PDF the complete list of issues belonging to them.

F.A.Q. search

The F.A.Q. search is a feature packed Frequently Asked Questions management system that allows you to offer your customers an easy way to automatically get answers to their specific questions on-line 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Your visitors will get the information they need when they want it and within the context of your site. This prevents your customers from leaving your site when they have questions, and cannot readily find answers.
With TDC software desktop application you will be able to create, maintain and categorize F.A.Q. for your products. These F.A.Q. created on TDC will be published on your web customer portal. That’s how your customers will have the possibility to access to them on line 24 hs a day, 7 days a week thus reducing support calls and e-mail requests. Your customers will get instant answers to their questions, directly from your web site. They won’t have to call your company or send you an e-mail and wait for a reply. By providing an easy to use and centralized F.A.Q. you can focus on your high value tasks rather than answering the same questions over and over again. You can create virtually unlimited topics to organize your F.A.Q.s and have virtually unlimited number of questions.

Ideas management

We also explain before that your users will be able to report “new idea”s related to your products.

Idea Management feature enable your users and your customers also to accurately capture, describe, and communicate ideas by letting them use rich text formatting, attachments, status and category properties. This module also offers a commenting system whereby formal comments can be used to respond to an idea or ask clarifying questions. The ideas can be easily converted into new features within a project, providing information and allowing all team members to map decisions to business challenges, as well as to project motivations and drivers.

Web Portal Ideas List

You are in control

You are in control of what your customers can see, report, and request. By default, the issues you track in your TDC desktop program are not visible in the TDC web customer portal, it’s up to you to decide the access level of your customers. You can make them public using TDC desktop application by marking issues as “Publicly Visible” — this is a simple click and select operation. These issues will then become visible to Customer Portal users (depending on their security settings).

Customer Portal provides a cost-effective way to allow large numbers of users to have limited visibility into the Bugs and Features tracked in your TDC system. More importantly, it provides a tool for collaborating with everyone involved in a project.

Many of the features of “TDC web customer portal” can be set up by your self (like the logo in the header, the languages supported, the voting system and so on) thru the configuration module in your desktop TDC program but we will talk about that in another blog entry.

There was not news about TDC in the last months but that is not completely true. We have been working in new features that we’ll be ready very soon.

For example, the new Report Center:

The new layout is more clear than before and has more options for every report. Also the previewer was changed into a much more powerful one which it is possible to send the reports for mail, to export them as doc, xls, html, pdfs or even to edit them.